Chief welder sues Bay Bridge builders - By Sean Holstege, Daily Review Online, CA
Leon's case follows another high-profile whistleblower complaint against KFM's lead partner, Peter Kieiwit & Sons. Last year Los Alamos National Laboratory employee Gene Griego sued Kiewit and a number of big construction firms involved in the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain project.
In the Clark County District Court case, Griego, a lifelong non-smoker, alleged he developed severe respiratory illness after tunnelling firm Kiewit and others exposed him to dust and silica particles.
According to the lawsuit and published reports, workers in the tunnels of the future underground nuclear waste dump site were not given protective respirators until 1996, four years after the work started.
The lawsuit cites pre-construction federal studies warning of the risk of silica dust. It also alleges that the dust measurements by a Kiewit industrial hygienist exceeded safety levels, but were altered by her supervisors who had been 'fraudulently doctoring the recorded sampling times so as to yield a fictional lower concentration of particulates than was actually present.'